


When there's life

by GrapefruitZest



Category: Alex Rider - Anthony Horowitz
Genre: Gen, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-10
Updated: 2021-02-21
Packaged: 2021-03-15 22:08:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29321403
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GrapefruitZest/pseuds/GrapefruitZest
Summary: After getting shot by Damian Cray, Yassen wakes up to find himself in the hospital, under MI6’s tender care.
Comments: 18
Kudos: 40





	1. Chapter 1

Yassen gradually became aware of the sound of a machine nearby. _Beep, beep, beep_ , it went, never ceasing. He opened his eyes slowly, trying to locate the source of the noise. He was in a bed somewhere, his body covered with a thin white sheet. The first thing he noticed was that it was brightly lit and he had to blink a few times for his eyes to adjust to the brightness. He looked around. He was alone in what looked like a hospital room, and the beeping came from a heart monitor beside his head. Yassen stared for a moment, watching the machine graph out his heartbeat.

Yassen tried to remember how he ended up here, but his mind drew a blank. The last thing he remembered was working with Damian Cray, Air Force One and Alex Rider. Alex Rider. The memories came flooding back, getting shot in the chest by Damian Cray and passing out. Did Alex manage to stop the Cray’s plans then? Who brought him to the hospital? Yassen did not feel any pain at the moment, but he knew it was thanks to the painkillers in the IV drip that stood next to the heart monitor.

Yassen lifted a hand to adjust the hospital gown he was wearing, intent on checking the damage the bullet had caused. He hand made it as far as five centimeters before it jerked to a stop with the sound of metal jangling softly. He tried the other hand and was rewarded with the same effect. He looked down and saw handcuffs attached to each side of the bedrail, the other ends disappearing under the sheet. Yassen had wondered briefly if he would be able to check himself out of the hospital, but the handcuffs answered his question with a resounding no. There was not much he could do at the moment, and he closed his eyes again to get some rest.

* * *

Yassen awoke some hours later to the sound of voices in his room. He pretended to be asleep as he listened to what they had to say. They spoke English with British accents. So he had been captured by MI6, then. It was unsurprising, since he’d been on British soil and Alex Rider was an MI6 spy.

“... Should be regaining consciousness anytime soon.” A male voice said. “The surgery went smoothly, and we will want to keep him here for monitoring for another week. After that, I estimate it will take a few months of rehab to regain his strength.”

“Great.” A woman’s voice. “My colleague, John Crawley, will stop by later to make plans to transport him to our facility as soon as possible.”

There was some noise as one of the occupants moved around and fiddled with some equipment in the room. Then, the woman continued dryly. “Is that necessary? We only need him alive, doctor. Not comfortable.”

The doctor didn’t respond, but the movement stopped and they both stepped out shortly after. Yassen pondered this information for a short while before sleep claimed him again.

* * *

The next time Yassen woke, there was a bright spot of pain in his chest. He panicked for a moment and tried to move, before he remembered the hospital and the conversation that happened earlier.

“You’re finally awake.” A voice remarked.

Yassen opened his eyes to find a man dressed in a badly fitted suit seated in a chair at the end of his bed. He was reading a newspaper, which he folded when Yassen turned to look at him. Yassen didn’t attempt to move again, just stared at the man and willed him to continue speaking.

“My name is John Crawley. I work for MI6, and I’ll be responsible for looking after you during your stay with us.” He smiled a little. “It’s a pleasure to have finally caught you, Yassen Gregorovich.”

Yassen would not have responded to such a statement under normal circumstances, but the pain in his chest meant that he had no strength left to speak even if he wanted to.

Crawley, it seemed, was not expecting a response, for he continued the conversation on his own. “The doctor informed me that you would be feeling some pain,” Crawley said. “If you agree to answer some of our questions, we can give you something to make the pain go away.”

Yassen was not surprised that this would be MI6’s approach to dealing with him. The pain was intense, but it would be nothing compared to what his employers would do if they found out he’d snitched on them. Crawley proceeded to ask a couple of questions, and Yassen picked a spot on the wall to focus on and stayed silent until Crawley left the room.

* * *

Yassen spent the next seven days handcuffed to the bed in a mostly conscious state. He tried to learn as much as he could about his situation and the surroundings, but the pain was a huge distraction and it meant that he was in no position to escape even if he was free to move around. Yassen doubted that he would be able to make it down the corridor unassisted.

Nurses came to check on him infrequently. Yassen could see that they were afraid, and none of them attempted to do anything beyond making sure he was not about to die in their care.

The first time he had been awake when a nurse had come in, he’d requested to use the restroom. Yassen was not sure how long he’d been chained up by then, but his bladder was a source of discomfort that nearly rivaled the pain in his chest. The nurse shook his head, pulling out a bedpan and handing it to Yassen. He stood in the room while Yassen struggled to conduct his business with a person watching and to empty the bedpan when Yassen was done.

Yassen was released from the hospital on schedule a week after he was admitted. The pain had faded only slightly at this point, but his condition was no longer life threatening, the doctor had informed him that afternoon.

At night, Crawley returned with three armed men dressed in generic military fatigues without name tags or unit insignias. They uncuffed Yassen from the hospital bed for the first time in his stay and immediately cuffed them together behind his back. The cuffs were a lot tighter than before, and they dug uncomfortably into Yassen’s wrists, cutting off the circulation in his hands. One of the men produced a hood from somewhere, which he dropped over Yassen’s head, cutting off his view of the outside world. Yassen felt himself being manhandled out of the bed, before he was dragged down the corridor by his forearms by a man on either side of him, his toes brushing helplessly against the cold linoleum tiles.

They went down multiple flights of stairs to emerge outside into a warm summer night. Yassen was dragged to what sounded like an idling van and bundled into the back. Then, doors slammed and they were driving out of the complex, towards what Yassen knew would be an unpleasant and bleak future with no hope of escape.


	2. Chapter 2

Yassen sat quietly in the middle of the cell, his legs crossed on the ground in front of him. Meditation was a technique that he had first picked up at Malagosto years ago, but it had taken years for Yassen to become a master. He usually used it to keep himself calm while planning a hit, but it served him equally well now as he prepared to be interrogated by MI6.

Yassen was not sure how long he had been in the cell for. After leaving the hospital, they had driven for hours in silence. They could have reached anywhere in the UK in that time, but Yassen suspected that it had been a ruse to disorient him and they were still somewhere near London. They had stopped at what felt like an underground carpark, where Yassen was dragged out of the van and into a brightly lit room. He had been stripped searched and given a change of clothes consisting of a pair of loose fitting shorts and a t-shirt, before he was again handcuffed and dragged to his cell.

The cell was three meters by three meters. There were two buckets in one corner, one containing water and another empty. In the middle of the cell hung a lightbulb that had not gone off since Yassen was first escorted here. Once a day, a narrow slit in the bottom of the door opened and a tray of food was slid into the room. At least, it felt like once a day. Yassen would be surprised if his mealtimes occurred at any sort of regular interval.

Besides meditating, Yassen occupied himself with getting better. He’d peeled the bandages off his chest when he first got to his cell to inspect the damage. There was a massive, purple bruise, and in the middle of it all, a neat line of sutures where the doctor had operated. The doctor had mentioned that he’d broken multiple ribs as well, and it certainly felt that way. Yassen took it easy at the beginning, doing simple stretches and walking around the small, confined space.

Adequate rest was also important for Yassen’s recovery. It was hard to sleep with a light bulb burning brightly above his head for all hours of the day, and especially hard for someone who was accustomed to sleeping four hours a night. Yassen tried to aim for seven, but he doubted he was getting anywhere near that amount. He’d tried to use his shirt to cover his eyes, but it was chilly lying on bare concrete. To top it off, a guard had showed up minutes after he’d shielded his eyes, opening a slot in the door at eye level.

“The prisoner is not allowed to cover his face!” He’d barked, and startled, Yassen had obediently put his shirt back on.

It was some weeks - Yassen had lost track of time long ago, but it had to be at least that long, for the bruises on his chest had long faded and the sutures disappeared - before Yassen finally saw another human face. He’d spent time wondering perhaps if the higher ups had forgotten about him, if they would leave him in here until he died of natural causes. He heard footsteps on the corridor outside and was anticipating his daily meal when the other slot in the door opened again for a guard to bark orders at him.

“On your knees, facing away from the door. Hands on your head.”

The guard waited for Yassen to comply before unlocking the door. Yassen heard at least two people enter his cell. One of them grabbed his arms to cuff him, the other dropped a hood on his head, and together they lifted him to his feet and dragged him out of the cell.

Yassen memorized the turns they were taking, trying to form a mental map of the building in case he found a chance to escape. He was led down a series of corridors and up a flight of stairs. He heard someone open a door and he was led through the door and dropped into a chair. His hands were uncuffed from behind his back and secured to the arms of the chair he was sitting in. It was silent in the room after that, but Yassen was not sure if the guards were still in there. He looked around, straining to make out shapes outside his hood, before giving up and staring straight ahead.

After a few moments, a man that Yassen had not been aware of spoke from directly in front of him. “Please remove the hood.”

From somewhere behind him, someone stepped forward and pulled the hood off Yassen’s head. Yassen blinked a few times, adjusting to the brightness in the room. He was sitting at a table, and the man who had introduced himself as John Crawley in the hospital was sitting across from him. He was dressed in the same ill-fitting suit as before, but at least he’d bothered to change his tie.

“Mr Gregorovich,” Crawley began pleasantly, his hands clasped in front of him. “Have you given any thought to our questions?”

Yassen had. MI6 wanted information, and he knew the longer he held out, the greater the chance that what he had was outdated and no longer valuable. That, and he was only as useful to them for as long as he knew something they did not. They would have no use for him once he shared what he knew. Yassen doubted they would execute him; he would most likely be left to rot in a hole somewhere until death came by natural causes, but Yassen wanted to minimize the chance of Scorpia seeking retribution against him.

Once again, Yassen chose not to acknowledge Crawley, focusing his attention on a spot on the wall behind him.

Crawley continued to push and probe for a while, but Yassen didn’t rise to the bait. Finally he nodded at the guard behind Yassen, who stepped forward and slapped Yassen hard across the face. Yassen’s head snapped backwards, and he felt blood pooling in the bottom of his mouth. It took him a few moments to catch his breath and recover, and when he did he focused his gaze on Crawley and spat a bloody mix of saliva on the table between them.

“Have I got your attention now?” Crawley enquired.

Yassen didn’t reply, but his icy gaze didn’t leave Crawley’s face this time either.

It wasn’t long before Crawley directed the guards to hit Yassen again. And again. The beating reminded Yassen of a point in his life almost two decades ago, when he’d been forced into servitude by Vladimir Shakovsky. Yassen had come out of that experience stronger, a survivor, and he told himself that he would this time as well.

It felt like an eternity before Crawley finally grew tired. “We’ll continue tomorrow.” He said and left the room with the guards.

Alone once again, Yassen tried to catalog the damage he’d sustained. A few of his teeth felt looser than before and he was still bleeding in his mouth and from multiple cuts on his face. He felt slightly woozy, but he didn’t think they’d hit him hard enough to give him a serious concussion, more to do with the fact that he had eaten nothing besides bread and water for a month. Yassen sighed internally and tried to catch some rest. He had a feeling he would need it tomorrow.

* * *

Yassen woke up to the sound of a door slamming. He blinked slowly and rotated his neck, trying to get the blood flowing again as Crawley made his way into the room in fresh clothes with a cup of coffee.

“Smells bad in here,” Crawley remarked.

Yassen had woken up in the middle of the night with an urgent need to use the toilet. Given that they had left him bound to the chair, he had seen no choice but to pee where he sat. It was designed to humiliate him, Yassen knew. He’d taken part in his fair share of interrogations on Scorpia’s behalf, watched as the willpower drained slowly out of the men shackled in front of him and actively chipped away at their strength and desire to live. It was inevitable that it would happen to him here too, but right now, Yassen did his best to ignore the cold, wet shorts adhering uncomfortably to his legs and Crawley’s attempt to get under his skin.

A look of mild annoyance flashed on Crawley’s features when Yassen didn’t react to his comment.

“Let’s try a different question today,” Crawley said between sips of coffee. He’d pulled out a notepad and a pen and looked ready to take notes. “What did you say to Alex Rider when you encountered him whilst working for Damian Cray?”

That was not the question Yassen was expecting. Why could MI6 not ask Alex Rider themselves? Yassen thought back briefly. Did Damian Cray manage to kill Alex after he’d shot Yassen? That was possible, but they had been about to take off. How had he ended up in MI6 custody then? And why did it matter what Yassen said to him if he was dead? Yassen didn’t answer, hoping that Crawley would provide more information.

The two men stared at each other impassively in silence. Finally, Crawley scowled. “Alex Rider went missing,” he said. “On a trip to Venice, Italy. What did you tell him?”

Yassen shrugged. Alex Rider was an inquisitive child, always showing up where he didn’t belong. Yassen would not be surprised if he’d been caught interfering with the business of the Mafia veneta and been punished for it.

“Did you send him to Scorpia?” Crawley prompted.

Yassen raised an eyebrow. “His father was a double agent, working for MI6. Why would I send him to Scorpia?”

Crawley narrowed his eyes thoughtfully as he mulled over Yassen’s statement. “It’s an awful coincidence, that’s all. What is Scorpia currently planning?”

Yassen wanted to kick himself. He’d planned on staying silent for much longer, but the change in subject to Alex Rider had left him wrongfooted. He liked the child, wanted to see him live, and he had a feeling that if MI6 had not realized that before, they would now. Yassen wondered if Alex Rider was really missing, or if Crawley had made that up because he suspected that he was Yassen’s weak spot. At any rate, Crawley was delusional if he thought Yassen knew what Scorpia was planning.

“Mr Gregorovich,” Crawley looked disappointed. “I”m going to give you some time to reflect on my questions.I hope you’ll have some answers for me the next time we meet.”

Crawley left, and a short while later, two guards came in to escort Yassen to another cell. Unbeknownst to Yassen, a much subdued Alex Rider was currently imprisoned in the cell above him.

Yassen was not given time to reflect by himself. His new lodgings contained nothing but a chair, and the guards secured his arms and legs to it before they left. Someone else entered right after, dressed in the same uniform as the guards in addition to a balaclava that obscured most of his facial features.

“Mr Crawley is very sorry that it had to come to this,” he declared, his smooth accent at odds with his menacing demeanor and their surroundings. “But you should feel free to cooperate with us at any time.”

The man set to work almost immediately, unrolling a set of tools on the ground in the corner and hovering over them for a while. Then, he stood up with a pair of pliers, and walked over to where Yassen was sitting. He stroked the fingers on Yassen’s left hand with one hand, seemingly deep in thought, before positioning the pliers on the fingernail on his pinky finger.

“This is your last chance, Mr Gregorovich.” He declared.

Yassen just stared back at him.

Yassen thought he could feel his nail separating from his finger in slow motion. It hurt like hell, and it took all of his willpower not to look at the damage to his hand. Yassen didn’t say a word as the man worked his way through all the nails on his left hand. It was impossible not to notice the blood, sticky and thick, dripping from his hand onto his thigh and the floor. By the time they moved on to his right hand, Yassen was sweating despite the cold, his sweat stinging the cuts on his face from yesterday’s beating that had barely scabbed over. The pain shooting down both his arms was unimaginable, and Yassen didn’t bother to control the tears or the screams as the day wore on.

“You don’t have to do this to yourself,” the man reminded him. “All you have to do is tell us what you know about Scorpia, and we’ll stop right here, feed you, give you a nice hot shower…”

Yassen did not allow himself to think about how nice it would be to be clean and fed again.

* * *

Yassen was left bound in the chair for what felt like the entire night.

On what felt like the next day, they came back for his toes.

When all his nails were gone, the man looked at him with a pretend air of sadness. “Why are you protecting Scorpia? You’re worth nothing to them. You’re never getting out of here alive.”

Yassen did not get to rest when his interrogator left the room. They played loud music from hidden speakers, alternating between rock, classical, pop. If Yassen managed to get out of here alive, he knew he would never want to listen to Beethoven’s Fifth Concerto ever again.

Shortly after that, they moved on to shocking him with electricity. A guard tore his shirt off and attached electrodes to his chest. They started low, then gradually ramped up the current and the duration. It stung just a little at first, but as it wore on, Yassen felt the muscles in his body spasm long after the current had been turned off. He lost control of his bowels multiple times, and the interrogator mocked him for soiling himself.

“You’re nothing but a filthy, useless animal,” he said. “What did Scorpia see in you?”

They tried a number of experimental drugs as well. Truth serums, the interrogator said. One of them made Yassen nauseous, and he spent the day dry heaving in his cell. Another triggered hallucinations, and he spent days in a delirious state muttering about hunting and caviar that no one could make sense of.

After what felt like an eternity of torment, Yassen finally gave in.

“I want to talk,” he rapsed, his throat raw from screaming and thirst.

* * *

The guards took pains to clean him up and put him in a new change of clothes. They didn’t bother to handcuff or blindfold him this time for the walk back to the interrogation room. Yassen had lost the will to fight, and they all knew it.

Crawley was waiting for him when he entered, swaying on his feet. There, Yassen told him everything he knew about Scorpia; the organizational structure, current members, what little he knew about their current plans. He was probably signing his own death warrant, but he was too far gone to care.


	3. Chapter 3

Yassen woke to sunlight streaming in through the bars high up in the cell and on his face. He had grown used to waking up this way, after more than twenty years. The weather was pleasant most days of the year, and Yassen spent most of the daylight outside in the sunshine. Had Yassen known that he would end up here and not rotting in a windowless hole or dead after talking, he would have done so a lot sooner.

The prison he was in was on the Rock of Gibraltar. It was run by MI6, and Yassen had been flown out here when it appeared that MI6 had obtained any information they were interested in from him. He had not heard from John Crawley in a long time, and Yassen liked it that way. The man certainly was not on his Christmas card list.

It had taken Yassen many months to recover from his ordeal. The physical injuries healed first, aided by a physical therapy regimen Yassen had drawn up for himself. The emotional trauma would last far longer. For years, Yassen found himself sleeping consistently badly, waking up abruptly in the middle of the night in a cold sweat before realizing that MI6 did not have a reason to torture him again.

Yassen had developed a routine years ago. It was hard not to in prison, when the door to your cell unlocked and locked and meals were served at the same time every day. And what did it matter? Yassen was not running from anyone or anything. The guards kept him in as much as they kept out anyone who would have been interested in capturing him. He had access to world class healthcare for free. In some ways, life was better than retiring in a dacha in St Petersburg like Yassen had envisioned for all those years.

Yassen began the day with a workout in the sunshine. “Idle minds are the devil’s workshop” was an adage the prison warden subscribed to, and he made sure to provide his prisoners with access to books, exercise equipment and whatever they asked for, within reason. After a shower, Yassen headed for the dining hall for breakfast. Here, Yassen got a bowl of steel cut oats and some fruit. It reminded Yassen a little of his days in Estrov, where he would line up with his classmates for lunch everyday at noon, except the food here was fresher and did not contain any dead flies for unintentional protein.

Yassen had breakfast while reading the day’s edition of The Guardian. It was here that Yassen started wishing that he was free outside. The papers frequently contained news that MI6 did not wish its prisoners to know about, and every day the guards went through the newspapers and snipped out articles it wished to censor. Today’s list of censored articles included a full pager at the start of the Politics section, which rarely happened. It annoyed Yassen enough to think back to the many interviews he’d had with John Crawley years ago. He had not revealed information about himself or his many bank accounts, and Crawley had not asked either. All he had to do was get far enough from here, and he’d be able to start a new life, free and far away from the forces that had done so much to break him.

It was a fleeting thought. There were armed guards, multiple layers of barbed wire fences, and they were on the tip of a cliff on an island. Without any help from the outside, he’d be caught within minutes.

Yassen finished up the rest of his breakfast quickly and headed to the library. It was his preferred spot to avoid the heat of midmorning heat. He’d been learning Japanese just before he’d been caught, and he’d picked it up again quickly after finding some Japanese books in the library. There was not anyone to practice with, though, and Yassen could not simply hop onto a plane to Japan on a whim. Yassen had learnt to content himself by watching the occasional Japanese show that he came across on the small TV in his cell, but there were only so many anime reruns he could watch for two decades without being bored and what was the point of it all anyway?

The guards’ body language was different today, Yassen noticed. A little more tense than usual. It was not something that was there earlier in the morning, and Yassen was always watching. Not because he wanted to escape, but because he knew if he did not not have something to focus his mind on he would slowly go crazy. Perhaps the reason for their behavior would make itself known in due time. Yassen could wait. He had plenty of time. For now, he put these observations aside and continued on his way to the library.

The library was located in a single story building located at one end of the complex. It consisted of twenty shelves of books spread out across the floor, and once a month Yassen and the other prisoners were allowed to put in suggestions for books they wanted. Yassen had already suggested almost everything he could possibly want to read. He had spent a month in his first year reading the original Russian edition of Crime and Punishment, which suddenly felt a lot more interesting now that there was nothing to look forward to. Yasesn had just settled down to resume his fourth re-reading of The Brothers Karamazov when he spotted a guard strolling towards him out of the corner of his eye.

Yassen proceeded to flip a page in the book, seemingly engrossed in it. Only when the guard was standing beside him did Yassen look up with a partially raised eyebrow.

“Gregorovich,” the guard said gruffly. “Warden’s office.”

That was new. Yassen did not think he was in trouble; he had a routine here that he had never deviated from. He’d met the warden just twice, once when he first arrived and another when the warden retired and someone new took over. Yassen put his book down on the table and followed the guard out of the library.

There were two men standing outside the warden’s office when Yassen got there. Both of them neatly dressed, clean shaven and pale, in stark contrast to the permanent residents and guards of the prison who spent large parts of their day soaking up the sunlight. From England, Yassen surmised. Bodyguards, perhaps? One of them opened the door to the office as Yassen approached at his unhurried pace.

There was a man sitting at the warden’s desk. Like his bodyguards outside, he was dressed neatly in a suit and tie. Yassen looked at his familiar face, taking in the blonde hair containing a few streaks of grey and serious brown eyes. The warden himself was nowhere to be seen.

“Yassen,” the man greeted with a small smile.

Alex Rider. The teenager that Yassen remembered would be older than Yassen himself was when he’d last seen him, but there was no mistaking the resemblance to his father. It felt strange seeing Alex again, under these circumstances, but it was no surprise that Alex would grow up to work for the same employers. Yassen had thought about him occasionally over the years, and he knew that Alex would either be dead working for MI6, or working for MI6.

“Alex,” Yassen greeted neutrally, taking a seat across from him uninvited. “What brings you to Gibraltar?”

Alex shrugged. “I’ve heard great things about the weather.” He remarked as he ran a hand through his hair, a show of nervousness hardly worthy of senior MI6 officials with the ability to drop in for unannounced visits at secret prisons. He waited patiently for Alex to continue with his real reason for visiting.

“As the new head of MI6, I’m having this prison shut down,” Alex began. “We’re having the inmates transferred to other locations.”

Alex Rider, head of MI6? He was young, very young, but he’d also started his career earlier than most. And the spying genes certainly ran in the Rider family. Yassen could not say he was surprised. He tilted his head slightly, willing Alex to continue again.

“I’m having you released,” Alex continued. He looked slightly embarrassed. “I know you’ve killed a lot of people. But I’ve read your whole file, and the way we treated you wasn’t acceptable. You did spare my life a couple of times.. wanted to tell you that in person.”

After twenty years of nothing, these changes were too sudden. Yassen scrutinized Alex for a moment longer, wanting to believe that this was real, that he would not find himself released into employment with MI6 or something of the sort. Alex seemed genuine, but he was a stranger and a master spy, and Yassen had been out of practice for years.

“What’s the catch?” Yassen murmured.

“There is none.” Alex replied firmly, losing the awkwardness from earlier as the conversation moved away from more personal matters. “When you’re released, you’ll be free to go anywhere you wish.”

Yassen did not reply to that, but a faraway look entered his eyes as his gaze shifted from Alex to the window.

Alex stared at Yassen in silence. He was tired. The last few years had contained too many instances of loss and bloodshed. When he had finally gained the clearance to open Yassen’s file, he’d simmered at the lies he’d been told. Yassen had not died. How many more lies and partial truths had Mrs Jones told him that he’d yet to figure out? He had been forced to bury the matter for years, until his sudden promotion meant that he was in a position to take action. This had been personal, a closure on one chapter of his life.

“I’m glad to finally see you again,” Alex finally said.

Yassen did not react, but his eyes glazed over slightly as he finally allowed himself to imagine what the future could hold.


End file.
